Rick McGinnis mounts ‘a full throated’ — or should that be ‘throtled’? — ‘defense of male perogatives’

Let’s start with Clarkson, the man whose appeal was almost singlehandedly responsible for the relaunch of the show at the turn of the decade, and who is the undisputed public face of Top Gear. He’s a career hack – journalist to North Americans – though the English use the term with pride. He’s also a proudly old school hack, nursing grudges and battling with other public figures, such as the newspaper editor/reality TV judge Piers Morgan, who he threw a glass of water at during the final Concorde flight, then punched in the face at an awards dinner.

He’s been called a racist, sexist and homophobe, and an “übermale” by Dame Helen Mirren, an honour that most men would covet. Two years ago he got into a scuffle with a bunch of “hoodies” – the English equivalent of a wigga – outside his daughter’s birthday party, hauling one of them into the air by his eponymous sweatshirt…